Staff at a lodge the place asylum seekers are set to be housed from subsequent month are “in shock” after a redundancy announcement.
Workers at Stradey Park Hotel & Spa in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, have been instructed this week they face being made redundant on 10 July.
Sky News understands round 100 employees are employed on the lodge.
The Home Office confirmed at first of June {that a} most of 207 folks, made up of household teams, will likely be accommodated throughout 77 rooms on the lodge.
It insists it makes no choices about lodge staffing instantly.
‘They’re laying everyone off’
Victoria Price has labored on the lodge’s spa for round 15 months.
She instructed Sky News everybody was “in shock” once they heard employees could be made redundant.
“They called an emergency meeting in the hotel for yesterday (Tuesday) morning, we all went in,” she mentioned.
“It was the two managers of the hotel there talking to us. The hotel manager – she had to hold the tears back you could see – and she just announced that they’re laying everybody off as from 10 July, even them are getting laid off.
“The house owners of the lodge… they did not even come down to offer the information themselves, they left it to the 2 managers who’re additionally going to lose their jobs as effectively which is absolutely unhappy.
“The whole of the staff upstairs were all waiting, nobody was looking for jobs, they were all sticking together, waiting ’til final last minute, hoping that they were going to get offered something or that they wouldn’t get left.
“It was simply silence once they broke the information.”
‘Disgraceful’
Llanelli MP Dame Nia Griffith mentioned it was a “disgraceful and degrading way to treat the workers”.
The matter was raised within the Senedd (Welsh parliament) on Wednesday.
Plaid Cymru Senedd member, Cefin Campbell, mentioned he was “alarmed” by experiences that “around 100 jobs at the hotel will be lost as a direct result of the Tory UK government’s decision to take over the hotel for the purpose of housing asylum seekers”.
Mr Campbell mentioned he was “extremely proud of the fact that Wales is a nation of sanctuary” however that the UK authorities’s lodges coverage “does not serve the needs of asylum seekers”.
Jane Hutt, the Welsh authorities’s social justice minister, mentioned: “I understand that up to 100 jobs are at risk as a result of the Home Office’s decision to use the Stradey Park Hotel.”
She added that the Welsh authorities was “monitoring this concerning situation closely”.
Carmarthenshire County Council chief, Darren Price, mentioned he was “outraged that this proposal by the Home Office to concentrate a large number of asylum seekers is going ahead”.
The Home Office has beforehand mentioned the usage of lodges to accommodate asylum seekers was “unacceptable” and mentioned there have been at present “more than 51,000 asylum seekers in hotels costing the UK taxpayer £6m a day”.
Rishi Sunak’s authorities is exploring quite a few methods of housing asylum seekers, together with a controversial barge to be moored off of the Dorset coast.
The prime minister’s promise to “stop the boats” was certainly one of quite a few pledges he requested the British folks to evaluate him on firstly of the yr.
But figures launched this month present Channel crossings are nonetheless on the rise.
‘They’re going to destroy a neighborhood’
Stradey Park Hotel employee Ms Price mentioned she was in a extra lucky place than others as she had managed to seek out employment elsewhere earlier than the lodge’s closure.
“We’ve got an amazing manager in the spa with us and we just all rallied, we just looked for jobs, so all the spa girls got new jobs before. So we’re all leaving this week, it’s the last week for us now,” she mentioned.
“Everybody has been brilliant and we’ve noticed now on the groups that a lot of the community, the businesses and things, are putting it out there ‘I’ve got jobs, I’ve got jobs’ so that shows what the community is.”
While the neighborhood have rallied round employees members, Ms Price mentioned the Home Office ought to “hold their heads in disgrace”.
“They’re actually going to destroy a community, jobs, things like that,” she mentioned.
“They haven’t got in touch with anybody, they won’t respond to anybody’s messages or anything either.
“You’ve received folks like myself who has solely been there about 14, 15 months, so we would not be entitled to redundancy pay or any type of package deal or something like that. Nothing has been put in place for any of the employees.”
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A spokesperson for the Home Office mentioned: “Hotel staffing decisions are at the discretion of the hotelier and contractors. The Home Office is not involved in these decisions.”
Sky News has approached Stradey Park Hotel & Spa for remark.
Source: information.sky.com”